t used to be that you needed a very bad actor to get the scenery-crewing over-emotions that old vaudevillians used to throw their emotions into the back rows.

But now, with AI-creations trailblazed by firms such as Pixar, you can have it easy and cheap, even if you are sitting right in front of a mega-screen and don’t need this ham-fisted CGI playacting.

I’m talking about modern Western animation, though I’ve seen it in foreign productions like Kpop Demon Hunters. In this case I was trapped in a car dealership waiting on slow repairs (do the mechanics share one set of tools or something?). While I was trying to read (off to one side) and the other customers were amusing themselves with their phones, the dealership still had a huge screen on some kiddie channel. So for four hours, “Bolt” and “Wreck it Ralph” were grinding in the background.

Even trying to ignore it, I noticed two things about CGI productions. First, there is always a symphonic soundtrack that follows the action, slow and tender when nothing is happening, and frenetic in the too-numerous action sequences. It’s pretty much the same ensemble playing non-stop throughout the two hour movie.

The second is the overacting – faces are plastic (and in that, I mean very flexible). Their eyes blink windshield-wiper wide, their mouths flap and gape. The actual storytelling is impossible and, over the hours, tedious.

I’m afraid to say this, western audiences, but this is how you amuse babies, all this over-acting and loud sudden noises.

What does that say about their target audiences? About you?

Look, I loved Pixar way back in the desk-light days. It was cute and new. But now you see stories that are predictable and pointless, stories so juvenile it makes your teeth hurt, stories that should never have been greenlit. Throw-away films, done on the cheap.

No wonder I sit to the side and read. Because I’m an adult, and this is beneath me.

The wasteland just got more wastey.

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